Noonan, etc.

I've forgotten to post this. It's Peggy Noonan over the weekend, the latest in the Republican intelligencia to blast Palin. An old school, thinking, principled conservative, Noonan is one of the several "elite" Republicans who have endorsed Obama (as Powell and Chris Buckley have) or have been content to blast the GOP without outright jumping ship (Noonan and Brooks).

Her supporters accuse her critics of snobbery: Maybe she's not a big "egghead" but she has brilliant instincts and inner toughness. But what instincts? "I'm Joe Six-Pack"? She does not speak seriously but attempts to excite sensation—"palling around with terrorists." If the Ayers case is a serious issue, treat it seriously. She is not as thoughtful or persuasive as Joe the Plumber, who in an extended cable interview Thursday made a better case for the Republican ticket than the Republican ticket has made. In the past two weeks she has spent her time throwing out tinny lines to crowds she doesn't, really, understand. This is not a leader, this is a follower, and she follows what she imagines is the base, which is in fact a vast and broken-hearted thing whose pain she cannot, actually, imagine. She could reinspire and reinspirit; she chooses merely to excite. She doesn't seem to understand the implications of her own thoughts.

This "Nixonian" split within the GOP is fascinating. Ross Douthat has a great post in the Atlantic about how Sarah Palin has really divided the party, but how the grassroots need elites.

Here's the thing: The Republican Party will be a populist party going forward, or it won't be a party at all. But the more populist it becomes - the more figures like Palin and Mike Huckabee and Tim Pawlenty replace the blue-blazer Republicans of yore - the more it needs an elite capable of preventing it from spinning away into anti-intellectualism, hidebound dogmatism, and pure folly.

This split was evident on Meet the Press Sunday when when Joe Scarborough claimed that the negative attacks were working until the economic crisis hit - and David Brooks claimed that McCain is losing because (as Powell mentioned) the GOP is "narrowing." As much as anything, those two represent the two prevailing wings of the Republican party.